So I have been (very) mildly involved with the team attempting to secure linux.conf.au for Melbourne in 2008. All I have to say is that Melbourne is a fantastic location for it, and these people have put a LOT of effort into making this bid special. Excellent job guys! And to Donna - you rock!

Check out the bid at http://www.mel8ourne.org/

I highly recommend viewing the video at the end =)

In an attempt to be a good ozlabbian - here's my bit to ensure we get #1 in google searches on 'Anton Blanchard':

Everything you ever wanted to know - right here

To the best of my knowlegde, it's all true!

Well, I hope that our guests this evening didn't go away thinking that. The least they could do is consider the food crap as well!!!

nah, seriously... Had a fantastic night with some wonderful company who had to put up with us and our cooking - hope it wasn't too traumatic for them. Chris cooked magnificent fried rice, beef steak (YUM!) and sweet chilli chicken, and I added to it with peking duck pancake thingies and soy and ginger salmon. Think it was well appreciated.

I've had approximately 1.5 bottles of wine all to myself, and thus thought now would be a good time to blog and tell the world about my plans!

So as it turns out, my lovely boyfriend (Chris) has about a thousand projects that he needs finished. I feel that I am nowhere near a strong enough coder and would like to one day earn the title of "hacker" as per the rest of the team I work with, and have volunteered to take on his home projects. Various open source based play things that need a bit of coding to make them do something fun or helpful around the house.

So my plan is to include a section on my web page to keep updated with the latest junk i'm playing with, all my latest code, etc. I intend to force myself to improve by having a projects section on my web page that I DO NOT want to be ashamed of. Well... for too long, anyways. So therefore I will HAVE to keep updating it with new things so as not to appear lazy, and better things so as not to appear CRAP. Hah! That'll learn me!

Also... There's a team of ppl in Melbourne (my old home town!) who are hoping to snare LCA for 2008 to be held in Melb. I think that would be SERIOUSLY cool, and ppl should definitely get behind the effort... It's been so long since the last Melbourne one (the first one!), so it's about time it returned home =) That would seriously rock.

But for now, there is still some leftover wine to drink (from dinner), and an early morning alarrm to go drivies to Bungendore with some of our esteemed colleagues visiting from US (and dinner guests from tonight!). Oh, and these hiccups to get rid of. yay

Later!

YAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is all I have to say for tonight. Will add something better here soon, I promise.

When you can watch it in 30 seconds (re-enacted by bunnies)!!

The exam hasn't been marked as yet, although I'm feeling very confident that all went well. Questions all seemed pretty reasonable. So while I don't actually "have" a masters degree as yet, I have completed ALL work requirements to gain one! Suppose I'll get my piece of paper in the mail once I apply to graduate and tell them I couldn't be bothered attending a ceremony where the main highlight is standing around for hours with a group of other students sniffing each other's BO and waiting for some pompous old professor to hand out scrolls. Joyous. Mum will be disappointed, but she's already seen me graduate once and doesn't really need to go through it again.

Got a rather annoying reminder as to why I'm happy to be away from Melbourne. I met up with a group of my old colleagues for coffee (that's not the reason - they're lovely). I left them a little after 11am and headed off to RMIT city campus to get my student card updated so as not to be thrown out of my exam. I arrived just on 11:30am and parked my car in a 1hr meter park, put in my $2, went in to get my card updated and also caught up with another previous colleague and very good friend, Michael, from the good ol' days of lecturing and tuting at RMIT. I left before 12:30 so that I could save my car before the parking inspectors arrived.

Too late. And not "just" too late... I mean way too late... I got a parking ticket at 11:36 - only a few MINUTES after paying my hour in full! WTF?!?!? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Obviously I'll be fighting this one - probably to no avail...

I'm all for parking inspectors booking people who park their cars in wrong places - across people's driveways, etc... they just bug the hell out of me when you get booked within minutes of paying the correct fees!

So from yesterday, I have a masters degree AND a parking fine. Other than that, I did get to come home and see my boys again! Much smooching from all three (especially Gizzy who seemed to be making up for any lost time, and also ate HEAPS to make up for the lack of appetite while I was away).

It's nice to be loved! =)

Currently in Ballarat staying at the parent's house. I drove from Canberra yesterday to save having to drive 7.5 hours to Melbourne on Wednesday for my exam in Web Media Technologies (no url available because you need to have an RMIT CS username and password to access any of it).

This is exciting because (if all goes to plan), it will be my last ever exam! Unless I decide to change career and move into law, nursing, accounting, marketing, etc etc etc...... Anything requiring further study that can't be done by thesis alone. Come to think of it, a few law subjects here or there would probably be pretty interesting!! Still, I'm happy about being only 2 days from a finished masters degree!

I know it's really sucky, but one of the things I enjoy about staying with my parents is my mother's penchant for chick mags - Woman's Day, and other various gossipy crap. I never buy them myself because they seem like such a waste of money, however am happy to read it if someone else is silly enough to want to waste their own cash! Kinda reminds me of an old housemate who used to give me money to go out and buy him Cosmopolitan and a few other girlie mags so that he could pretend they were mine.

Tomorrow I have to study more, run in to visit my grandmother briefly, and then scoot out to Yella Fella's to grab some satay for lunch (named such by my uni best friend's boyfriend NOT because he's racist but because of the canary yellow building from which they operate). During our bachelor degree study in Ballarat, there was a group of us who were totally addicted to the food - I'm always in search of something similar in Canberra (although had trouble even matching it in Melbourne). It's just really hard to find such a fabulous restaurant at such incredible prices. Also recommended is the curry veg!

One of the bad things about coming here is that dad always uses it for an excuse to drink wine and eat chocolate! The wine is all good (and so is the chocolate - mmmmmmmmmmmmmm), but I really need to keep off the latter!

The other bad thing is how much I miss my Chris and our two boys... Can't wait to finish my exam so that I can head home to them =)

Oooooooohhhhhhhh - just realised it's now after midnight - my exam is now tomorrow, as is my coming home! YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!! =)

I'm currently second in line in a google search on my name! Still not as good as I can be.

Come on guys!!! A few more links to me should do it! get cracking =)

Other than that, cats are good, Chris is excellent, my parents gave me money to buy a really good knife for the kicthen (for a birthday pressie) and it arrived today (well, Chris and I went halvies in a whole knife block - it's pretty cool!)- things are generally pretty cool.

I have my final exam to complete my masters degree this coming Wednesday, so much studying (and driving to Melbourne) to be done this weekend. I have my iPod, so 10 hours in the car won't be too painful! Wish I could download a podcast of my exam materials, although that may just put me to sleep while driving and then I wouldn't pass the exam anyways. Good in theory though!

One of our "first dates" that Chris took me on was a walkies up to Square Rock in the Namadgi National Park. Beautiful walk. So when he wanted to go for a "shortish" walk on Sunday, I suggested we go back there.

I managed to get there a whole lot easier than this time ten months ago =) - I may not look like it, but I have actually managed to increase my fitness levels somewhat. Very happy!

So it seems that when we go here together we have a habit of losing (or attempting to lose) something. Last time there was a strong and very sudden wind that carried off an almost empty water bottle (which Chris still keeps reminding me that I owe him a water bottle for!! Only joking of course). This time my iPod decided to have a go at jumping. It managed to fall in between two rather large rocks in a nice little unreachable (by hand) crevasse. Lucky Chris bought his new walking poles! He was able to move the iPod to an area where it was able to be grabbed.

My iPod is fine. The cover protected it perfectly! However, the cover isn't so fine - managed to really scratch up the screen protector. New ones on order!

Apart from that, we had a really nice walk. Gorgeous scenery, very nice bird-life - crimson rosellas, some strange kind of green parrotty thing, little finches.

We had a chat with a lovely older couple on the way back down. They got back to the car park around the same time as us. We watched them take off in a white subaru wagon. On the way home we caught up with them as they were travelling at about 30km below the speed limit. I waited for a safe area to pass and then started overtaking.

One of the things I hate most on the roads is people who drive REALLY slowly, then won't let you overtake. Like these people. Travelling at 70km/h in a 100km/h zone, yet as soon as I made an attempt to pass they floored it! After a few choice swear words directed at the driver, I managed to get past anyways just as another car came fanging around the corner towards us.

Do people actually realise how dangerous they are when they're acting like complete morons? Added to my theory that I had made some really incorrect generalisations about the average road moron after seeing some really dangerous driving practices from older generations around Canberra - and not the ones who are too old (or suffering from afflictions generally associated with age that prevent safe driving practices) to be driving safely. This group is late-fifty-ish and acting out of pure stupidity.